[tied] Re: PIE Punctual and Durative

>
> > Well, I have an idea that does not require philosophy.
> >
> > I believe that the verbal idea that follows a durative is
> > interpreted as co-occurring; what follows a punctual is
> > sequential.
>
> I don't get it, could you elaborate?
>
> In our days, the relationships between adjacent clauses can be
> neatly specified by conjunctions, in addition to adverbs and
> adverbials.

True. How is that relevant here?

> Earliest PIE probably did not have conjunctions. If this is true,
> it would have been useful to have a method of indicating that Clause
> B sequentially occurred after Clause A as opposed to Clause B
> overlapping Clause A.

Saul Levin thinks subordinate clauses in IE is an import from the
Semitic languages and that they replaced subordinate constructions
with non-finite verb forms, as is happening now in Finno-Ugric
languages in Russia. If so, we should look for the functional
predecessors of conjunctions in suffixes in PIE non-finite forms
(participles, infinitives, verbal nouns) or in finite forms derived
from them.


Torsten